Snake" s race was incapable of tears. He said, I have waited longer than you can know for that word.
" I" m sorry it comes at the end."
Perhaps it was supposed to be like this.
Then there was a swirling of air, a scintillation in the ruined palace, and the owner of the mountain, the owner of the ruined Earth came to them in a burning bush.
AGAIN, SNAKE? AGAIN YOU ANNOY ME?.
The time for toys is ended.
NATHAN STACK YOU BRING TO STOP ME? I SAY WHEN THE TIME IS ENDED. I SA Y, AS I" VE ALWAYS SAID.
Then, to Nathan Stack: GO AWAY. FIND A PLACE TO HIDE UNTIL I COME FOR YOU.
Stack ignored the burning bush. He waved his hand, and the cone of safety in which they stood vanished. " Let" s find him, first, then I know what to do."
The Deathbird sharpened its talons on the night wind and sailed down through emptiness toward the cinder of the Earth.
22.
Nathan Stack had once contracted pneumonia. He had lain on the operating table as the surgeon made the small incision in the chest wall. Had he not been stubborn, had he not continued working around the clock while the pneumonic infection developed into empyema, he would never have had to go under the knife, even for an operation as safe as a thoracotomy. But he was a Stack, and so he lay on the operating table as the rubber tube was inserted into the chest cavity to drain off the pus in the pleural cavity, and he heard someone speak his name.
NATHAN STACK.
He heard it, from far off, across an Arctic vastness; heard it echoing over and over, down an endless corridor; as the knife sliced.
NATHAN STACK.
He remembered Lilith, with hair the color of dark wine. He remembered taking hours to die beneath a rock slide as his hunting companions in the pack ripped apart the remains of the bear and ignored his grunted moans for help. He remembered the impact of the crossbow bolt as it ripped through his hauberk and split his chest and he died at Agincourt. He remembered the icy water of the Ohio as it closed over his head and the flatboat disappearing without his mates" noticing his loss. He remembered the mustard gas that ate his lungs as he tried to crawl toward a farmhouse near Verdun. He remembered looking directly into the flash of the bomb and feeling the flesh of his face melt away. He remembered Snake coming to him in the board room and husking him like corn from his body. He remembered sleeping in the molten core of the Earth for a quarter of a million years.
Across the dead centuries he heard his mother pleading with him to set her free, to end her pain. Use the needle. Her voice mingled with the voice of the Earth crying out in endless pain at her flesh that had been ripped away, at her rivers turned to arteries of dust, at her rolling hills and green fields slagged to greengla.s.s and ashes. The voices of his mother and the mother that was Earth became one, and mingled to become Snake" s voice telling him he was the one man in the world- the last man in the world- who could end the terminal case the Earth had become.
Use the needle. Put the suffering Earth out of its misery. It belongs to you now.
Nathan Stack was secure in the power he contained. A power that far outstripped that of G.o.ds or Snakes or mad creators who stuck pins in their creations, who broke their toys.
YOU CAN" T. I WON" T LET YOU.
Nathan Stack walked around the burning bush as it crackled impotently in rage. He looked at it almost pityingly, remembering the Wizard of Oz with his great and ominous disembodied head floating in mist and lightning, and the poor little man behind the curtain turning the dials to create the effects. Stack walked around the effect, knowing he had more power than this sad, poor thing that had held his race in thrall since before Lilith had been taken from him.
He went in search of the mad one who capitalized his name.
23.
Zarathustra descended alone from the mountains, encountering no one. But when he came into the forest, all at once there stood before him an old man who had left his holy cottage to look for roots in the woods. And thus spoke the old man to Zarathustra: " No stranger to me is this wanderer: many years ago he pa.s.sed this way. Zarathustra he was called, but he has changed. At that time you carried your ashes to the mountains; would you now carry your fire into the valleys? Do you not fear to be punished as an arsonist?
" Zarathustra has changed, Zarathustra has become a child, Zarathustra is an awakened one; what do you now want among the sleepers? You lived in your solitude as in the sea, and the sea carried you. Alas, would you now climb ash.o.r.e? Alas, would you again drag your own body?"
Zarathustra answered: " I love man."
" Why," asked the saint, " did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved man all too much? Now I loved G.o.d; man I love not. Man is for me too imperfect a thing. Love of man would kill me."
" And what is the saint doing in the forest?" asked Zarathustra.
The saint answered: " I make songs and sing them; and when I make songs, I laugh, cry, and hum: thus I praise G.o.d. With singing, crying, laughing, and humming, I praise the G.o.d who is my G.o.d. But what do you bring us as a gift?"
When Zarathustra had heard these words he bade the saint farewell and said: " What could I have to give you? But let me go quickly lest I take something from you!" And thus they separated, the old one and the man, laughing as two boys laugh.
But when Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to this heart: " Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that G.o.d is dead!"
24.
Stack found the mad one wandering in the forest of final moments. He was an old, tired man, and Stack knew with a wave of his hand he could end it for this G.o.d in a moment. But what was the reason for it? It was even too late for revenge. It had been too late from the start. So he let the old one go his way, wandering in the forest, mumbling to himself, I WON" T LET YOU DO IT, in the voice of a cranky child; mumbling pathetically, OH, PLEASE, I DON" T WANT TO GO TO BED YET. I" M NOT YET DONE PLAYING.
And Stack came back to Snake, who had served his function and protected Stack until Stack had learned that he was more powerful than the G.o.d he" d worshipped all through the history of Men. He came back to Snake and their hands touched and the bond of friendship was sealed at last, at the end.
Then they worked together and Nathan Stack used the needle with a wave of his hands, and the Earth could not sigh with relief as its endless pain was ended...but it did sigh, and it settled in upon itself, and the molten core went out, and the winds died, and from high above them Stack heard the fulfillment of Snake" s final act; he heard the descent of the Deathbird.
" What was your name?" Stack asked his friend.
Dira.
And the Deathbird settled down across the tired shape of the Earth, and it spread its wings wide, and brought them over and down, and enfolded the Earth as a mother enfolds her weary child. Dira settled down on the amethyst floor of the dark-shrouded palace, and closed his single eye with grat.i.tude. To sleep at last, at the end.
All this, as Nathan Stack stood watching. He was the last, at the end, and because he had come to own- if even for a few moments- that which could have been his from the start, had he but known, he did not sleep but stood and watched. Knowing at last, at the end, that he had loved and done no wrong.
25.
The Deathbird closed its wings over the Earth until at last, at the end, there was only the great bird crouched over the dead cinder. Then the Deathbird raised its head to the star-filled sky and repeated the sigh of loss the Earth had felt at the end. Then its eyes closed, it tucked its head carefully under its wing, and all was night.
Far away, the stars waited for the cry of the Deathbird to reach them so final moments could be observed at last, at the end, for the race of Men.
26.
THIS IS FOR MARK TWAIN.
Paladin of the Lost Hour This was an old man. Not an incredibly old man; obsolete, spavined; not as worn as the sway-backed stone steps ascending the Pyramid of the Sun to an ancient temple; not yet a relic. But even so, a very old man, this old man perched on an antique shooting stick, its handles open to form a seat, its spike thrust at an angle into the soft ground and trimmed gra.s.s of the cemetery. Gray, thin rain misted down at almost the same angle as that at which the spike pierced the ground. The winter-barren trees lay flat and black against an aluminum sky, unmoving in the chill wind. An old man sitting at the foot of a grave mound whose headstone had tilted slightly when the earth had settled; sitting in the rain and speaking to someone below.
" They tore it down, Minna.
" I tell you, they must have bought off a councilman.
" Came in with bulldozers at six o" clock in the morning, and you know that"s not legal. There"s a Munic.i.p.al Code. Supposed to hold off till at least seven on weekdays, eight on the weekend; but there they were at six, even before six, barely light for G.o.dsakes. Thought they" d sneak in and do it before the neighborhood got wind of it and call the landmarks committee. Sneaks: they come on holidays, can you imagine!
"But I was out there waiting for them, and I told them, "You can"t do it, that"s Code number 91.03002, subsection E," and they lied and said they had special permission, so I said to the big muckymuck in charge, "Let"s see your waiver permit," and he said the Code didn"t apply in this case because it was supposed to be only for grading, and since they were demolishing and not grading, they could start whenever they felt like it. So I told him I" d call the police, then, because it came under the heading of Disturbing the Peace, and he said... well, I know you hate that kind of language, old girl, so I won" t tell you what he said, but you can imagine.
" So I called the police, and gave them my name, and of course they didn" t get there till almost quarter after seven (which is what makes me think they bought off a councilman), and by then those "dozers had leveled most of it. Doesn" t take long, you know that.
"And I don"t suppose it"s as great a loss as, maybe, say, the Great Library of Alexandria, but it was the last of the authentic Deco design drive-ins, and the carhops still served you on roller skates, and it was a landmark, and just about the only place left in the city where you could still get a decent grilled cheese sandwich pressed very flat on the grill by one of those weights they used to use, made with real cheese and not that rancid plastic they cut into squares and call it "cheese food., " Gone, old dear, gone and mourned. And I understand they plan to put up another one of those mini-malls on the site, just ten blocks away from one that"s already there, and you know what"s going to happen: this new one will drain off the traffic from the older one, and then that one will fail the way they all do when the next one gets built, you" d think they" d see some history in it; but no, they never learn. And you should have seen the crowd by seven-thirty. All ages, even some of those kids painted like aborigines, with torn leather clothing. Even they came to protest. Terrible language, but at least they were concerned. And nothing could stop it. They just whammed it, and down it went.
" I do so miss you today, Minna. No more good grilled cheese. " Said the very old man to the ground. And now he was crying softly, and now the wind rose, and the mist rain stippled his overcoat.
Nearby, yet at a distance, Billy Kinetta stared down at another grave. He could see the old man over there off to his left, but he took no further notice. The wind whipped the vent of his trenchcoat. His collar was up but rain trickled down his neck. This was a younger man, not yet thirty-five. Unlike the old man, Billy Kinetta neither cried nor spoke to memories of someone who had once listened. He might have been a geomancer, so silently did he stand, eyes toward the ground.
One of these men was black; the other was white.
Beyond the high, spiked-iron fence surrounding the cemetery two boys crouched, staring through the bars, through the rain; at the men absorbed by grave matters, by matters of graves. These were not really boys. They were legally young men. One was nineteen, the other two months beyond twenty. Both were legally old enough to vote, to drink alcoholic beverages, to drive a car. Neither would reach the age of Billy Kinetta.
One of themsaid,"Let"s take the oldman.
" The other responded, " You think the guy in the trenchcoat" ll get in the way?"
The first one smiled; and a mean little laugh. " I sure as s.h.i.t hope so. " He wore, on his right hand, a leather carnaby glove with the fingers cut off, small round metal studs in a pattern along the line of his knuckles. He made a fist, flexed, did it again.
They went under the spiked fence at a point where erosion had created a shallow gully. " Sonofab.i.t.c.h!" one of them said, as he slid through on his stomach. It was muddy. The front of his sateen roadie jacket was filthy. " Sonofab.i.t.c.h!" He was speaking in general of the fence, the sliding under, the muddy ground, the universe in total. And the old man, who would now really get the c.r.a.p kicked out of him for making this fine sateen roadie jacket filthy.
They sneaked up on him from the left, as far from the young guy in the trenchcoat as they could. The first one kicked out the shooting stick with a short, sharp, downward movement he had learned in his tae kwon do cla.s.s. It was called the yup-chagi. The old man went over backward.
Then they were on him, the one with the filthy sonofab.i.t.c.h sateen roadie jacket punching at the old man"s neck and the side of his face as he dragged him around by the collar of the overcoat. The other one began ransacking the coat pockets, ripping the fabric to get his hand inside.
The old man commenced to scream. "Protect me! You"ve got to protect me...it"s necessary to protect me!"
The one pillaging pockets froze momentarily. What the h.e.l.l kind of thing is that for this old f.u.c.ker to be saying? Who the h.e.l.l does he think" ll protect him? Is he asking us to protect him? I" ll protect you, sc.u.mbag! I" ll kick in your f.u.c.kin" lung! " Shut "im up!" he whispered urgently to his friend. " Stick a fist in his mouth!" Then his hand, wedged in an inside jacket pocket, closed over something. He tried to get his hand loose, but the jacket and coat and the old man"s body had wound around his wrist. "C"mon loose, motherf.u.c.kah!" he said to the very old man, who was still screaming for protection. The other young man was making huffing sounds, as dark as mud, as he slapped at the rain-soaked hair of his victim. "I can"t...he"s all twisted "round...getcher hand outta there so"s I can..." Screaming, the old man had doubled under, locking their hands on his person.
And then the pillager"s fist came loose, and he was clutching for an instant- a gorgeous pocket watch.
What used to be called a turnip watch.
The dial face was cloisonne, exquisite beyond the telling.
The case was of silver, so bright it seemed blue.
The hands, cast as arrows of time, were gold. They formed a shallow Vat precisely eleven o" clock. This was happening at 3:45 in the afternoon, with rain and wind.
The timepiece made no sound, no sound at all.
Then: there was s.p.a.ce all around the watch, and in that s.p.a.ce in the palm of the hand, there was heat. Intense heat for just a moment, just long enough for the hand to open.
The watch glided out of the boy"s palm and levitated.
" Help me! You must protect me!"
Billy Kinetta heard the shrieking, but did not see the pocket watch floating in the air above the astonished young man. It was silver, and it was end-on toward him, and the rain was silver and slanting; and he did not see the watch hanging free in the air, even when the furious young man disentangled himself and leaped for it. Billy did not see the watch rise just so much, out of reach of the mugger.
Billy Kinetta saw two boys, two young men of ratpack age, beating someone much older; and he went for them. Pow, like that!
Thrashing his legs, the old man twisted around- over, under as the boy holding him by the collar tried to land a punch to put him away. Who would have thought the old man to have had so much battle in him?
A flapping shape, screaming something unintelligible, hit the center of the group at full speed. The carnaby-gloved hand reaching for the watch grasped at empty air one moment, and the next was buried under its owner as the boy was struck a crackback block that threw him face first into the soggy ground. He tried to rise, but something stomped him at the base of his spine; something kicked him twice in the kidneys; something rolled over him like a flash flood.
Twisting, twisting, the very old man put his thumb in the right eye of the boy clutching his collar.
The great trenchcoated maelstrom that was Billy Kinetta whirled into the boy as he let loose of the old man on the ground and, howling, slapped a palm against his stinging eye. Billy locked his fingers and delivered a roundhouse wallop that sent the boy reeling backward to fall over Minna"s tilted headstone.
Billy"s back was to the old man. He did not see the miraculous pocket watch smoothly descend through rain that did not touch it, to hover in front of the old man. He did not see the old man reach up, did not see the timepiece snuggle into an arthritic hand, did not see the old man return the turnip to an inside jacket pocket.
Wind, rain and Billy Kinetta pummeled two young men of a legal age that made them accountable for their actions. There was no thought of the knife stuck down in one boot, no chance to reach it, no moment when the wild thing let them rise. So they crawled. They scrabbled across the muddy ground, the slippery gra.s.s, over graves and out of his reach. They ran; falling, rising, falling again; away, without looking back.
Billy Kinetta, breathing heavily, knees trembling, turned to help the old man to his feet; and found him standing, brushing dirt from his overcoat, snorting in anger and mumbling to himself.
" Are you all right?"
For a moment the old man"s recitation of annoyance continued, then he snapped his chin down sharply as if marking end to the situation, and looked at his cavalry to the rescue. " That was very good, young fella. Considerable style you" ve got there."
Billy Kinetta stared at him wide-eyed. " Are you sure you" re okay?" He reached over and flicked several blades of wet gra.s.s from the shoulder of the old man"s overcoat.